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Comment by zapita | Hacker News Reader

That's such an apples-to-oranges comparison...

There is nothing Apple can do to preserve their Chinese user's privacy against their own government. Either they stay in China and allow the government to access their citizen's data, or they leave China and another phone manufacturer will allow the government to access their citizen's data.

Google on the other hand is under no such pressure to violate their user's privacy. They could stop at any time, but have decided that the increased revenue and margins they can extract from the data is more valuable than their user's privacy.

This seems so obvious to me, I don't understand why this false equivalence is brought up so often.

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> There is nothing Apple can do to preserve their Chinese user's privacy against their own government. Either they stay in China and allow the government to access their citizen's data, or they leave China and another phone manufacturer will allow the government to access their citizen's data.

Apple could absolutely leave China if they really cared about privacy; the backlash against the govt would be huge - your argument "but if we're not abusing your privacy, someone else might instead!" just backs the claim that Apple is doing it by choice, and their own free will. Both are doing it for money.

There will be no “backlash” against the government. China is not a typical democracy.

And do you really want a corporation to have the ability to hold a nation state hostage? What’s next? Allow us to sell our stuff without taxes, or we’ll shut shop and let you handle the outcry? Allow us to circumvent <insert a corporate unfriendly law here> or we’ll let you have it?

For better or worse, a corporation can’t be allowed to dictate the policies of a nation state. Yes, it is sad that the Chinese don’t get the same privacy rights as citizens of other countries, but that is a problem with the law of the land, not any company.

Actually, there is something Apple can do. They can start by not offering iCloud services in China. Sure, it would be an inconvenience for many, but at least they would be protecting the privacy of their users by not sharing their data with the government.

>Google on the other hand is under no such pressure to violate their user's privacy. They could stop at any time, but have decided that the increased revenue and margins they can extract from the data is more valuable than their user's privacy.

There is also no pressure on Apple to violate their users privacy. But, they do it because China represents a large percentage of their revenue growth. If it were not for their cooperation with the Chinese government their stock would tank. China is one of their largest markets, if not the largest, so of course privacy was always going to take a back seat.

>This seems so obvious to me, I don't understand why this false equivalence is brought up so often.

Probably because of Apple's hypocrisy on privacy and human rights. It's absolutely disgusting to listen Tim Cook preach about human rights and privacy, with every interview he does, considering their business practices in China.

> They can start by not offering iCloud services in China.

Even better, they could only offer end-to-end encrypted services in China so that the datacenter operators can't track more than the ISPs already can.

At the same time, there is no pressure on users to use iCloud. Or even buy Apple devices. Apple doesn’t have a monopoly in any segment.

China was a big market for Google. But they pulled out for censorship/privacy reasons, letting go of billions of $.

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